2 Slain in Bomb Attack on Ulster Police Station

Guerrillas bombed a village police station Saturday night and then raked the building with gunfire, killing two officers and wounding three, police reported.

The outlawed Irish Republican Army claimed responsibility for the attack, and in a telephone call to a Belfast television station said its gunmen would shoot any worker who tried to repair the building.

A police spokesman in the capital of Belfast said the bomb exploded shortly before 7 p.m. at the station in Ballygawley, five miles from the border with the Irish Republic. The guerrillas then opened fire on the Victorian, two-story building with automatic weapons, causing extensive damage.

“The station has been sealed off and the explosion has blacked out the entire village,” said a spokesman for the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

Press Association, Britain’s domestic news agency, said the two slain policemen were outside the station when the bomb exploded and the three injured officers were inside.

The explosion downed the main power cables in Ballygawley in County Tyrone.

It was the third IRA attack in a week and appeared to signal an intensified campaign against the mainly Protestant Royal Ulster Constabulary.

The mainly Roman Catholic IRA is fighting to unite Northern Ireland, a British province with a Protestant majority, and the predominantly Catholic Republic of Ireland.

The attack raised the police death toll in sectarian violence this year to 23, equaling that of 1976, the worst year for police fatalities since the feud began 16 years ago. The violence has claimed at least 2,460 lives since 1969.